A photograph showing former White House intern Monica Lewinsky meeting President Bill Clinton at a White House function submitted as evidence in documents by the Starr investigation and released by the House Judicary Committee on Sept. 21, 1998. (credit: Getty Images/Handout)

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WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — Former President Bill Clinton may apologize publicly to Hillary Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky for the 1998 affair that nearly derailed his presidency.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports the former president may apologize in an effort to help his wife’s potential 2016 White House run.

“The rationale? To fend off critics of his wife Hillary who blame her for protecting a powerful husband who is a sexual predator,” Michael Sneed of the Sun-Times wrote.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., another potential 2016 contender, slammed Bill Clinton earlier this year for being a “serial philanderer.”

“Many of the Democrats today still defend him and think he is the greatest thing,” Paul told CBS News in January. “But he was a person who took advantage of a young girl in the workplace and I think that is inexcusable.”

Paul stated at the time he didn’t know if the Lewinsky scandal would hurt the former secretary of state if she decides to run for president in 2016.

“It’s hard to separate them,” Paul said. “It’s not her fault, she’s had to tolerate the same sort of problems from him over time.”

The potential apology comes after Lewinsky wrote in Vanity Fair that she deeply regrets the affair she had with Bill Clinton while she was an intern at the White House.

Lewinsky penned that Clinton did take advantage of her, but that it was a consensual relationship.

“Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship.

Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position,” Lewinsky wrote. “The Clinton administration, the special prosecutor’s minions, the political operatives on both sides of the aisle, and the media were able to brand me. And that brand stuck, in part because it was imbued with power.”

Lewinsky testified before independent counsel Ken Starr about the affair in August 1998 for a report that was released to the House Judiciary Committee in September 1998. The House of Representatives impeached Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice in December 1998.

The 40-year-old Lewinsky says she decided to open up about the affair 16 years later after the suicide of 18-year-old Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi, who jumped to his death after he was secretly filmed kissing another man.

Lewinsky said that incident led her mother to relive everything that happened in 1998.

“She was reliving 1998, when she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. She was replaying those weeks when she stayed by my bed, night after night, because I, too, was suicidal. The shame, the scorn, and the fear that had been thrown at her daughter left her afraid that I would take my own life—a fear that I would be literally humiliated to death,” Lewinsky wrote, adding that she did not attempt to take her own life.

Lewinsky continued: “My own suffering took on a different meaning. Perhaps by sharing my story, I reasoned, I might be able to help others in their darkest moments of humiliation. The question became: How do I find and give a purpose to my past?”

Lewinsky also blames the Drudge Report for causing her “global humiliation.”

“Thanks to the Drudge Report, I was also possibly the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet,” she wrote.

Lewinsky currently wants “to get involved with efforts on behalf of victims of online humiliation and harassment and to start speaking on this topic in public forums.”